Is your field force fit for purpose? Assessing the competitive mindset

The pharmaceutical industry is data rich, but information poor. Field forces are frequently armed with a heavy artillery of clinical data and have been prepared for service by wave after wave of training programmes. But the key 10% is in the head. With pharmaceutical companies under increasing pressure to deliver growth, does your sales force have the competitive mindset?

The pharmaceutical field force is facing increasing scrutiny. Escalating drug development costs, indifferent R&D pipelines yielding fewer product launches, challenging franchise positioning, generic competition and imminent patent expiries are forcing big pharma to reengineer. The downsizing process has begun and its full effects are already being felt not least by the sales force, where numbers have been steadily shrinking. At the same time, global healthcare budgets are under the microscope; and as new stakeholders and influences on prescribing emerge, competition for market share has intensified. In a challenging and changing environment, the question remains: is your sales force fit for purpose?

Despite a gradual reduction of representatives in the field, the UK pharmaceutical industry continues to invest heavily in the sales force. Huge resources are ploughed into the recruitment and deployment of sales professionals a strategy that has historically reaped substantial rewards for the sector. Yet while great attention has always been paid to training medical representatives in the fundamental skills of selling, it is debatable whether sufficient focus has been placed on the most basic sales requirement of all: being competitive. A thorough understanding of the theory of selling is undoubtedly a vital component of success; but if it is not accompanied by a competitive mindset, representatives will fail reach their full potential. So what sort of questions should pharmaceutical sales managers be asking to determine whether their sales professionals, and in turn their teams, have a competitive mindset?

Q1: Are your representatives complacent?

Perhaps a good way to assess the principle of being competitive is to look at its opposite extreme complacency. Analysis suggests that the pharmaceutical industrys traditional model of selling has at times lacked a competitive edge. Too often companies have fallen into a complacency model, following conservative, tried-and-tested patterns, building comfortable relationships with traditional customers and simply perpetuating them. In the process, complacency can sometimes creep into the dialogues between brand teams and customers, and dynamic interaction disappears.

This pattern often occurs in markets where there is only one available therapy for a condition a non-competitive market can breed a friendship environment between representative and clinician, and as a consequence, the drive to achieve core aims during a call diminishes. The friendship environment is not, however, confined to single-product markets. It can develop when representatives have built up long-standing relationships with clinicians and as a result have, perhaps subconsciously, lost the desire to push and ask the right questions. Indeed, have your sales force forgotten how to challenge the customer? Complacency is the scourge of the competitive mindset.

Q2: Are your representatives closing on every call?

A typical symptom of the friendship environment is a reluctance to close on every call. Closing is the most important element of any sales interaction and is referred to in a variety of ways such as gaining commitment, securing action or achieving agreement. How ever it is referred to, when it comes down to it, it is simply closing asking a question at the end of a call to see whether anything is going to be done differently as a result of the meeting. Often when representatives become complacent, or have got to that friendship point, they are much less likely to ask those questions, and can feel uncomfortable asking someone that they have built a strong relationship with to do something differently.

Once again, this illustrates a lack of competitiveness. Do your representatives ask the two basic questions: what is the customer now going to do differently as a result of the call? And how many new patients have been prescribed my product by the customer?

Q3: Is your team well-prepared to handle objections?

Handling objections comes with the territory for sales professionals. But how well-equipped is your sales team to handle objections competitively and confidently? Preparation is critical. A good representative should be able to anticipate objections, and will have previously considered them in such a way as to ensure that responses are conveyed in a confident and measured fashion. In the process, rather than being feared, an objection can be regarded as a chance to sell more products, or to identify opportunities for new activities and new ways to open up the market. A well-prepared team is best placed to be a competitive one. A sales force that welcomes objections is a sales force that demonstrates a competitive mindset.

Q4: How well does your team know its environment?

A huge part of the competitive mindset is about understanding the environment within which a product sits. Sales representatives need to know about more than just their own product and its clinical benefits. The only way a sales professional is going to feel confident in objection handling or asking for business is if they have a thorough and complete understanding of their marketplace.

Who are the key stakeholders in your therapy area? Who are the key influences on prescribing? Are there any new and emerging service providers? How is NHS reform/policy impacting your therapy area? What are the health priorities in your local market? Can your drug add targeted value to help stakeholders meet a target/objective? Where does your product sit on the patient pathway? Could this give you an advantage over your competitor? Who are your competitors and what are they doing?

Knowledge is an essential component of the competitive mindset. But this means much more than understanding your own product data: how well do you know your competitors products, messages and value propositions to a range of stakeholders? Nowadays a whole wealth of healthcare information is in the public domain and freely accessible; abstracts, clinical presentations and published data can all provide valuable competitor information. And if you know what your competitor is doing, it is much easier to identify areas where your own product competes more favourably, and build these into your messages.

Beyond clinical data, a comprehensive understanding of the changing NHS can undoubtedly inform a compelling commercial argument. Understanding how your product fits into NHS policy, or how the environment may need to change to accommodate your drug, increases the likelihood of its being used by your customers. Being aware of the NICE agenda, QOF points or local PBC objectives in your therapy area can significantly enhance a customer dialogue. Encouraging your team to think in this fashion, and to extend its approach beyond simple clinical messaging, is a true demonstration of the competitive mindset.

Effectively evaluating individuals in these areas is a vital ingredient in understanding whether your team is indeed competitive. But the fundamental question is much more simple:

Q5: Are you, yourself, competitive?

The competitive mindset is a cultural characteristic, not an individual one. It is a philosophy rather than a process, and it begins at the top. Instilling a competitive mindset into a sales team relies upon management endorsing and sharing the same beliefs, and cascading them down to those around them. Ultimately, a competitive mindset should be a collective responsibility that stretches across an organisation, rather than being confined to individual departments.

Harnessing the competitive spirit across an organisation will itself require a mindset shift for the pharmaceutical industry. Traditionally, pharmaceutical companies have operated in a silo mentality, where medical, marketing and sales departments have worked in isolation rather than in partnership. Success in the modern market relies upon achieving a symbiotic relationship between the three main disciplines, and, in the process, developing communications strategies that align a brands clinical characteristics and marketing messages with the priorities of its potential customer base.

Building and maintaining a competitive mindset is a top-down exercise. True success will come from the meaningful integration of sales and marketing at management level. Much of the information required to equip a sales force effectively is driven by marketing, who build appropriate messages based on environmental analysis and the interpretation of data provided by the medical teams. Sales managers, however, could benefit from being more proactive in their approach. Rather than simply relying upon marketing departments providing the messages, and then deciding for themselves which ones will work best, sales managers should be identifying the information they require to upskill their teams and working in partnership with marketing to find it. In the process, this creates a single, competitive unit that is working towards a common goal.

The bottom line

As always, the definitive answer to whether a sales operation is a success is found at the bottom line. Exactly how you arrive there, however, is based upon a combination of factors, including your product, your people and the marketplace. In a highly-regulated sector, medical representatives undoubtedly go through a high volume of training in the art of professional selling. But on its own this is insufficient. Success is about more than simply understanding your own products. It is a team game, and it requires a winning mentality. Much more can be done to instil an organisation-wide competitive mindset to help sales professionals deliver success at the bottom line. And sales management should be at the very heart of any agenda to create it.

SUMMARY 1. It is very easy to slip into a complacency model, and become too comfortable in your approach with customers. 2. Sales managers need to be aware of how the NHS environment has changed, and to identify how they can alter their teams practices to exploit it before their competitors do. 3. Selling is not simply about clinical messages. Sales teams require comprehensive market access information to become truly competitive; stakeholder analysis, NHS environmental audit and influencer mapping will help provide crucial background information for medical representatives. 4. Sales managers have a responsibility to improve the communication channel between medical, marketing and sales, to deliver thorough information for the benefit of their sales teams. 5. The competitive mindset is a collective responsibility, shaped and driven by medical, marketing and sales management.